Blessing balance / rework ideas

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Short and to the point, the current Blessings don’t lend themselves for all that much build diversity. Many blessings end up being underwhelming alternatives to the much stronger and sought-after Blessing (you know which).

Here are some rework ideas for currently totally underused Blessings, meant to make them much more exciting. The goal is to have more player agency and much more build diversity. Yet we also want to have some tough choices. In my rework concept, most of these Blessings now come as a hefty double-edged sword. Explanations found inside the summary brackets:

  1. All or Nothing 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
    Damage and Cleave Damage as well as incoming damage taken are increased by 15% / 20% / 25% / 30%.
Summary

Explanation: Instead of power, it just increases damage and cleave damage, so you no longer get stagger power from this Blessing. Micromanaging Stamina in combat is weirdly unintuitive. Furthermore, it doesn’t convey the risky nature of this Blessing at all, because fighting at low stamina is still extremely safe in Darktide.
So instead the Blessing is now always active while the weapon is out. As a trade-off, you now take extra damage equal to the damage bonus, finally making this Blessing a true “Risk vs Reward” Blessing. The damage value is also increased for extra spice. You dish out more and you also take more. Fair’s fair!
As a bonus, the tiered levels now make a lot more sense, as they give you control over how much extra damage you want to pump out (and also get punished with when you finally mess up).

  1. Blazing Spirit 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
    Warpfire has eternally engulfed this weapon. Enemies hit receive +1 / +2 / +3 / +4 stacks of SoulBlaze. Effect is doubled on critical hits and weakspot hits. Additionally, the soulfire acts as a light source, providing light up to 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 meters.
    Holding this fiery hot weapon you burn yourself, continously receiving 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 damage per second and generating 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 peril every second.
Summary

Explanation: Turns a rather uneventful Blessing into a total game changer.
Every hit now applies SoulBlaze stacks and the effect is doubled on critical and weakspot hits, emphasizing skillful play. Previously it only triggered on critical hits, at which point most enemies would already die, rendering the original version sort of redundant.

The visual effect of this weapon should be a blue soulblaze visual gfx and it should provide a decent light source for the entire team, making it an interesting pick for Lights Out modifiers.
This Blessing now also makes the SoulBlaze build of Psyker much more interesting by synergizing with various Psyker Talents.

A powerful Blessing needs a powerful trade-off.
The tick damage eats away at toughness first before it deals health damage. Yet this toughness damage also interrupts natural coherency toughness regeneration.
The constantly rising Peril makes high-peril high-damage Psyker builds more interesting. The Peril gain from this weapon cannot overload the Psyker, but the constantly rising peril will force you to pay attention when fighting.

  1. Infernus 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
    Holy Fire has engulfed this weapon. Enemies hit receive +1 / +2 / +3 / +4 stacks of Burn. Effect is doubled on critical hits and weakspot hits. Additionally, the fire acts as a light source, providing light up to 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 meters.
    Holding this fiery hot weapon you burn yourself, continously receiving 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 damage per second. The hot magazines make reloading more difficult, increasing reload time by 10% / 20% / 30% / 40%.
Summary

Explanation: Same as Blazing Spirit, but adapted for a non-Psyker ranged option. Peril doesn’t exist as a punishment for non-psykers, so instead they get a penalty on their reload, making the weapon more dangerous to reload in tight spots.
The visual effect for the gun will have to be normal fire or the gun heating up, obviously.

  1. Dumdum 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
    Weapon deals 10% / 15% / 20% / 25% damage at close range, but is also -10% / -15% / -20% / -25% less effective outside of close range as well as less accurate.
Summary

Explanation: The original Dumdum is a weird Blessing. You build stacks in close-range to get some neglectable damage bonus. Weird to minmax and hardly noticeable at all.

The new version here makes your gun straight up stronger in close range and weaker everywhere else, inherently. It’s conveying the idea of a short-ranged weapon focus much better. You also lose accuracy, so even if you counter-act the long range damage penalty with +25% damage on >armor class< perks, you will still have a hard time taking care of that sniper over yonder.

  1. Sharp Blade 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 (Formerly Flesh Tearer + Lacerate, now combined)
    All attacks cause 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 stacks of Bleed.
    Effectiveness is doubled against unarmored enemies.
    Ineffective against Flak Armor. Has no effect on Carapace Armor.
    Damage against Flak and Carapace armored enemies is reduced by 5% / 20% / 35% / 50%.
Summary

Explanation: Takes two samey Blessings and turns them into one that transforms the weapon it is chosen on significantly.
Infested, Unyielding and Maniac enemies receive 2-8 stacks of bleed per attack and it’s double that for Poxwalker cannonfodder, so Bleed is finally useful again on the basic enemy types. This Blessing makes debuffing Monster type enemies and Bosses easy and gives serious utility.
In turn, a sharp dagger is not really a good tool to pierce through plate armor.
Flak armored enemies only get 1-4 stacks of Bleed on attack and Carapace enemies are fully immune. This Blessing is no longer is a meh-tier upgrade. It forces you to fully commit to a Bleed style build, makes that Bleed build stronger, but also edges out it’s downsides. Double-edged swords are always more interesting choices to pick.

If the player wants some Bleed for the Zealot “Crit-n-Bleed” build, they may be inclined to pick Sharp Blade 1 or 2, as the damage penalty is still relatively minor. So an allrounder playstyle is also possible, but trades Bleed-effectiveness in for that.
Sharp Blade should also be made available for all other sword type weapons, making it a more interesting universal option to dabble with.

  1. Hammerblow 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
    Stagger Strength of all attacks on this weapon is increased by 10% / 20% / 30% / 40%. Cleave Damage is increased by a quarter of that. Weighting all your strength into your strikes, you now consume 2.5% / 5% / 7.5% / 10% of your total stamina whenever you swing.
Summary

Explanation: Building stacks on just about any enemy in Darktide is just not engaging at all. Before you can build some Impact stacks, most enemies will be already dead.
The solution is to integrate the stagger strength into the weapon itself. To round out the stamina penalty on swings, we’ll add some 2.5% / 5% / 7.5% / 10% Cleave Damage into the mix. This makes Hammerblow an interesting pick for all weapon types that suffer from too much damage cleave distribution, such as the Veteran’s Shovel.

  1. Between the Eyes 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
    Increases accuracy and weakspot damage by 10% / 15% / 20% / 30%.
    Additionally, clears and prevents suppression on weakspot hit for 1 second.
    This weapon’s fire rate is decreased by 5% / 7.5% / 10% / 15%.
Summary

Explanation: The idea is that you fire more precisely and carefully, like a calm sharpshooter would. Ergo you also don’t get suppressed. Firing disciplined shots takes requires a steady hand, so you fire slower.
The intention here is of course to make another somewhat meh Blessing into something more interesting. You trade speed for long range capability, which should be a fair trade.

  1. Unstable Power 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
    Up to 5% / 10% / 15% / 20% Power and incoming damage taken scaling with Peril.
    Set’s the treshhold for critical peril level from 97 down to 95 / 94 / 92 / 90.
Summary

Explanation: Another Blessing that was clearly meant to be high risk high reward, but had rather low impact. Now is much stronger and much more dangerous.
The already brittle Psyker receives more damage when they are high on peril. And the treshhold for overloading is strongly lowered.
At Blessing level 4, the Psyker will go into overcharge mode and blow up from 90 peril points and higher, unless they have their Psykinetic Wrath ready.

  1. Focussed Channeling 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
    Charging and quelling peril with this weapon cannot be interrupted.
    Additionally, increases charging and quelling speed by 5% / 10% / 15% / 20%.
Summary

Explanation: Moves this Blessing from a decent but situational pick to full on upgrade that is worthy of consideration for most players, by giving it way more utility. Scales the formerly Tier 3 Blessing for all Blessing Tiers. The new text also specifies more clearly what this Blessing does.

  1. Handy Magazines (Formerly Speedload)
    Weapon reload speed is increased by 10% / 15% / 20% / 25%, but magazine size is decreased by 5% / 7.5% / 10% / 12.5%.
Summary

Explanation: Sliding around with a ranged gun is seriously unhandy and it doesn’t seem to be used much.
A flat bonus to reload speed and a flat penalty to magazine size specializes your gun more, without requiring the need to slide when you are cornered. Feels more intuitive and moves the Blessing from meh-tier to consistent improvement during gameplay.

  1. Stripped Down 1 / 2 / 3 / 4
    Increases Sprint Speed and Dodge Range by 2.5% / 5% / 7.5% / 10% (Weapon is active).
    Allows dodging melee attacks while you are wielding ranged weapons.
    Also increases the number of effective dodges by 1 / 1 / 2 / 2.
    Total ammo capacity reduced by 10% / 15% / 20% / 25% and your maximum stock of grenades is decreased by 1.
Summary

Explanation: The idea of this Blessing is that your weapon is more light-weight because it was stripped down of any unnecessary extras. So it weights less because you bring less of it?
Makes a stronger significance and gives some niche use for dodging in tight spots when you have your ranged weapon out.
Very powerful for movement techs. In turn, you also have 1 grenade less to content with and that reduction will be the new maximum of refills you get. For instance, a veteran can only carry 3 grenades at most with this Blessing equipped.

  1. Geared up 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 (New Blessing)
    Bring 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 extra magazines and 1 / 1 / 2 / 2 extra grenades into battle.
    Your total Sprint Speed and Dodge Range are decreased by 2.5% / 5% / 7.5% / 10%.
    This penalty applies regardless of which weapon you have equipped.
    Increases the damage penalty when being shot at while sprinting by 50%.
Summary

Explanation: In concept, the opposite of the new Stripped Down. You arrive with a truckload of ammo, but it weights you down wherever you go. For niche use by players who want to go full ranged build.
Also increases the maximum value of your grenades and picking up grenades will stock up to that new maximum. For instance: A Veteran would arrive in the mission with 6 grenades and stock back up to 6.
Because this is very powerful, the penalty for picking this Blessing is as well.

  1. Frenzied Strikes 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 (New Blessing)
    Attack Speed is increased by 5% / 10% / 15% / 20%, but Power is decreased equally.
Summary

Explanation: Makes a melee weapon much faster, but forces you to trade in power. As power is damage, cleave and stagger power combined, this seems a very fair trade. As with many of the other Blessings in this suggestion, by having Tier 1-4 you are in charge of how much Power you want to sacrifice and how much faster you want to go.

  1. Heavy-handed Strikes 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 (New Blessing)
    Power is increased by 5% / 10% / 15% / 20%, but Attack Speed is decreased equally.
    Weighting all your strength into your strikes, you now consume 2.5% / 5% / 7.5% / 10% of your total stamina whenever you swing.
Summary

Explanation: Inversion of Frenzied Strikes, makes any melee weapon with this Blessing slower while also attaching a stamina penalty to all your attacks. However, doing so you gain a lot of oomph that can make for some interesting combinations.

This shall be enough for the time being. I hope these ideas give a great insight into how much more meaningful Blessings could be, both in changes to a weapons functionality as well as it’s up- and downsides.
My message is simple, Fatshark: Be a little more daring. You have a great system here to play around with.

What’s more, a little less of the stacking Blessings and less of Blessings activating on very situational circumstances (critical weak spot hits for instance are a rarity). These two often feel meh or are conceptually weird to grasp.
Instead, be more open to weapon property changing behaviors. Those are way more exciting and is what people expect when they play a looter shooter.

Edit: Made the text more reader friendly.

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Brutal Momentum:
original: Ignore Enemy Hit Mass for 1.5-4.5 seconds on Weak Spot Kill.

new: (Nerfed) Ignore a percentage of the enemy Hit Mass (20% to 60%) for 1,5-4,5 second on weak spot kill, stack 3 times

Alongside it, some of the weapon that currently need to have BM would need to be buffed in their hit mass thresholds

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As much as I appreciate the massive post with a ton of great ideas, blessings having downsides is a terrible idea…

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While this idea of converting yourself into a glass cannon can be interesting, this numbers are insane and not worth that damage buff, cause you take damage from more targets than you can focus on, especially on STG with special spam, 4 fire grenades will eat you fast.

Same, sometimes you will be forced to use melee, like to block bosses and it will take your toughness just cause boss put its agro on you, it’s like extra punishment without any mistake done, not fair. Double effect on weakspot is too much also, since force swords have ez patterns. And it will be worse on trauma stuff, cause how to headshot with charged atack? They probably should separate how BZ works on FS and trauma for this, and in this case it’s maybe better to be 1/2/3/4 for reg.hit/head hit/crit/head crit.

Eeeehh, you want to add overheat mechanic for lasguns? But there is plasmagun already.

This one is good imo, theoreticaly can work with a lot of guns, and you can convert them to fit zealot style properly

Also can be interesting, applying no bleed dot when hit armor makes sense. But stacks ammount should be rescaled for different atacks like with BZ imo (also damage rescale prob)

Poxwalkers are infested. Groaners are those trashmobs who are unarmored. Chain weapon also has nice damage against unurmored, but not so good vs infested, but still something could be done with bleed and should be done with horde clearing for chain weapon

Damage against Flak and Carapace armored enemies is reduced by 5% / 20% / 35% / 50%.

No need, man have some pity for chain weapon

How it will work if you have no stamina? Like you spend it on some blocks and when there is a window for a stirke you have not enough stamina to atack. Especially with hammers, they have a bit more defenssive style unlike shovel. I can see if something like that will apply only on heavy atacks. Overall i think trade like consume tamina > for more damage on heavy atacks can be interesting, stamina curios can become a bigger player.

You need to get rid of Deadly Accurate than, also reducing recoil is better than accuracy, cause of ads anyway

Same problem as with the first one

There is Warp flurry for charge speed, combining this both can be too much. Prob better just to merge Focussed Channeling and Warp flurry - Warp Channel or something.

This one can be good, and also there could be Bigger mags that works in reversed manner

But you can dodge melee with range weapon already…

Insane penalty, considering vet for example already takes more toughness damage during sprint. Also, how you supposed to do events, when you need to run around a lot? Like with power cells. Overall can be interesting trade between ammo vs mobility.

Again, light atack should not consume stamina, it will not work on boss kiting, when you mix blocks with hits.

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Not rly tho, depends on trade, and math behind, some weapons can benefit from transfering a bit of stat X power to stat Y. Especially with stamina consuming for heavies. Like the same idea with dodge limits, regular dodge takes 1, dodge slide takes 2, makes a perfect sense that some blessing will eat 1 stamina bar for damage buff, and if you have 0 stamina, buff will not be applied.

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Getting yourself out of stam in the middle of a fight is a much higer cost than you seem to realize.

You cannot do pushes anymore, you cant block a single attack and die for having to engage in melee, every single burster gets a free hit on you because you don’t have 2 stam bars to push them all because you have headtaker. What’s supposed to be the way to play around all this, not use melee? Why even have the “blessing” then?

They are blessings ffs, not “a blessing and a curse”. There weren’t any of those in VT2 either (except for “natural bond” but that made sense) the trade off was that you weren’t using anything else.

It sounds like a good idea in practice but having additional downsides to something that’s not supposed to have them. Again, not being able to have the other options is supposed to be downside enough. the fact that the balance is so far off that that isn’t the case IS the actual issue.

And just before anyone thinks this could possibly mean that we need to nerf the good options: GTFO
Buff the blessings that are useless, bad, or just not as good.

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Well maybe you should read the thread first? Cause i literally said above:

See? The key feature it can be for heavies only, or it can be done like Thrust, with ticks, where first 2 ticks don’t consume stamina, but last two does, or it can affect only special atacks so it’s easy to manage stamina. There also stamina on curios, and different block/sprint stamina reduction things, that can be buffed, what means you spend less stamina on defensive things and spend more on offensive, so stamina build can be a proper thing.

There actually such boons in Chaos Wastes, few but still. But even if there weren’t does it mean we can’t have more interesting mechanics than in V2? Such stuff like big d1ck buff but with some trade off is a common thing in games. It can work for some build variability. You can rename such blessings into “Mysteries of the machine spirit” and make red frame for them, lol.

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Very interesting ideas. Maintains the design of “Imperfect, Unique” weapons while also incentivizing people to actually want to try out new blessings and making a choice of losing out on alternative stats. Also lets players now want to try weapons that give stats that either double down on a certain perk or balance out losses. At the very least, having these kinds of blessings would mix-up the neutral gameplay loop and let players approach combat from a different angle because of what these new changes would allow and not allow them to get away with.

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I really like how these blessing ideas are not just passive increases, but actually change gameplay. That blazing spirit one is really interesting the more I think of how I’d play using it. They are quite engaging, and that is key to a game!

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Some ideas are, for me, really bad without some foolproof plan in place. I would like not to see the day when I’m in group of 3 psykers with Blazing Spirit AND Infernus on them, watching as my team slowly withers away and knowing I could do nothing about it but leave the game before it happens.

Some also seem like too much risk for pitable reward. Heavy-handed Strikes look good on paper, but it would be miserable to wear it. Let me tell you that 5% more attack speed made me see Slab Shield in diffrent light (from “it’s unusable” to “hey, it’s quite fun”, true, it’s still weak compared to other weapons, but there was diffrence). Now let anyone see 20% less, my dear Emperor it would be awfull. AND on top of that stamina consumption? Reciple for disaster that is. 20% more power is cool, but since every second swing you will be interrupted I don’t know if you will gain something. Also why Frienzied Strikes don’t have stamina counterpart in it?

But there are some nice ideas, if filtered, could be cool changes. Mind you, since next patch they will try to balance blessings, whatever the idea is, it might be long time before we even could dream about this.

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Aside from the aspects regarding stamina consumption that were already mentioned, here is one more thing that makes this a bad idea:
Dodging pauses stamina regen.

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It’s great to have stronger than usual buffs with gameplay penalties. Guild Wars did it and Elder Scrolls Online did it. And they were better for it. ESO called it “kiss/curse” itemology. It is not a passive power creep, it offers more power, but forces you to change how you play or you die.

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Hey, that’s my idea! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: I really would love to see this kind of change to BM though - I think it’d be good for the balance of the game overall, but the idea of being able to ignore a core gameplay mechanic 95% of the time is mind boggling to me

I think it depends heavily on what the downside is. Like the current All or Nothing blessing, having to maintain very low stamina (and risk having your block broken) falls in the category of “Why would I choose this?” for me. Limbsplitter is a little more interesting since you’re trading offense for offense, letting you lean more heavily into a particular style of play.

I don’t think a strong blessing need necessarily have a negative side effect though. If the activation requirements are non-trivial, then I think a blessing can be suitably strong (or only have positive effects) in return - taking Superiority for example (% Power on Elite Kill for 5 sec), I don’t see any reason why that couldn’t be stronger than it is. Elites are less common and more difficult to kill, so making the blessing quite strong seems like a fair trade IMO.

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Yeah, it’s great when it’s like this, and that’s why I said some don’t look like it. Now, be honest with me, do it look like it? 20%? 4 hits with Headtaker and you get the same bonus, no penalty. 2 kills with Slaughterer(30% bonus) and those 20% can cry in corner. You are dragged down into pits of the abyss for those 20%! You don’t change your gameplay, you just shoot yourself in a foot.

NO ONE will even consider using it when there are blessing that give you more and don’t put any brakes on you.

Even if we would change it to be reasonable- something like 20% power for -10% attack speed and leave stamina alone- I don’t think it’s a “game changing playstyle” blessing. Make some crazy changes if you want to cuff your hands and legs togheter.

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Man, your blessings would be punishing as heck to use, haha

I agree with the spirit of the post, though. We need less stacking blessings, less blessings with weird conditions, and waaaaay less blessings that overlap or do the same thing.

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